Author Topic: College Illiterates  (Read 1136 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline rickl

  • Established Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 1493
College Illiterates
« on: February 21, 2011, 07:29:57 PM »
College Illiterates
Post by charlesoakwood on Jan 9, 2011, 5:09pm

Most college students

[more than 500 students at 13 U.S. colleges in courses ranging from introductory biology to advanced ecology.]

in the United States do not grasp the scientific basis of the carbon cycle – an essential skill in understanding the causes and consequences of climate change, according to research published in the January issue of BioScience.
...
Most students did not truly understand the processes that transform carbon. They failed to apply principles such as the conservation of matter, which holds that when something changes chemically or physically, the amount of matter at the end of the process needs to equal the amount at the beginning. (Matter doesn’t magically appear or disappear.)

Students trying to explain weight loss, for example, could not trace matter once it leaves the body; instead they used informal reasoning based on their personal experiences (such as the fat “melted away” or was “burned off”). In reality, the atoms in fat molecules leave the body (mostly through breathing) and enter the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and water.

Most students also incorrectly believe plants obtain their mass from the soil rather than primarily from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. “When you see a tree growing,” Anderson said, “it’s a lot easier to believe that tree is somehow coming out of the soil rather than the scientific reality that it’s coming out of the air.”
...
It won’t be easy, Anderson said, because students’ beliefs of the carbon cycle are deeply engrained (such as the misconception that plants get most of their nutrients from the soil). Instructors should help students understand that the use of such “everyday, informal reasoning” runs counter to true scientific literacy, he said.
Re: College Illiterates
Post by glock32 on Jan 9, 2011, 5:18pm

Not surprising at all. Their illiteracy is not confined to scientific issues, either. I can't remember how many times I sat in a General Ed. course that required reviewing the work of peers. There are people in "institutions of higher learning" who do not even possess a 7th grade command of grammar and spelling.

Oh and by the way - don't you dare touch the pensions and benefits of the public school teachers, not after all the fine work they've done.
Re: College Illiterates
Post by pandora on Jan 9, 2011, 5:21pm

Nor to the issue of human life and when it begins.

It's human, it's alive, but "it's" not a human life; it's a "clump of cells".
Re: College Illiterates
Post by glock32 on Jan 9, 2011, 6:38pm

I think the most galling part of it all is not so much their own profound ignorance, but their strident and unwavering conviction that it's actually they who are the enlightened ones.
Re: College Illiterates
Post by sectionhand on Jan 10, 2011, 1:13pm


Jan 9, 2011, 5:18pm, glock32 wrote:
Not surprising at all. Their illiteracy is not confined to scientific issues, either. I can't remember how many times I sat in a General Ed. course that required reviewing the work of peers. There are people in "institutions of higher learning" who do not even possess a 7th grade command of grammar and spelling.

Oh and by the way - don't you dare touch the pensions and benefits of the public school teachers, not after all the fine work they've done.


Believe it or not this is not a recent phenomenon . The situation existed forty-two years ago when I was a college freshman . I would have witnessed more of it but my SAT scores were high enough that I wasn't required to take Freshman English . Although my mother made sure that I went off to college with a brand new dictionary . My spelling left a bit to be desired .
We are so far past and beyond the “long train of abuses and usurpations” that the Colonists and Founders experienced and which necessitated the Revolutionary War that they aren’t even visible in the rear-view mirror.
~ Ann Barnhardt